Trouble brewing: Beer Bistro's 100-strong selection of beers is lovely, but unfortunately the food and service fall flat
Jacob Richler
National Post
1,249 words
31 January 2004
National Post
Toronto
TO02
English
(c) 2004 National Post . All Rights Reserved.
BEER BISTRO
18 King St. E. 416-861-8242
Open for lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday
Lunch appetizers range from $5.50 to $12.75, mains from $8 to $17.50; dinner appetizers are $5.50 to $12.75, mains from $8 to $19.25
Reservations unnecessary
- - -
As it happens, I quite like beer. So I was very pleased when word came in late autumn that a place called Beer Bistro was due to open soon in the downtown core and serve up beer-friendly European food and 100-odd brews to go with it. Thirsty and keen, sometime in December I wandered in to have a first look around.
The place was immediately familiar, for it used to be a Rubino brothers restaurant called Zoom. Frankly, I was sad to learn of Zoom's demise, as I had a soft spot for the place.
Once, a couple of years back, when the Zone and the Atkins diets were at the peak of their early popularity, I took a friend there for lunch. He was a true believer, and when he spotted a steak listed on the menu he asked the waiter if he could have it without its accompanying vegetables or potatoes or yam fries or whatever offensively starchy stuff was supposed to come with it.
"Non, m'sieur," the waiter said, his French accent comically thick. "We cannot do that."
"Look, I'm not asking for a discount," my friend explained, baffled. "But I don't want anything on my plate but the steak."
"But m'sieur," the waiter protested, "without the vegetables the chef cannot make his tower!"
If you miss Zoom, too, rest easy, for there is plenty of it still standing at Beer Bistro, which the Rubino brothers now own with a new partner, local beer writer Stephen Beaumont. Evidence of Zoom is in fact everywhere. You bump into it even as you open the front door, which bears the old metal double-Z handle.
Within, the layout is the same, with the bar and lounge up front, lit by a dangling cluster of oversized globe lights. The dining room in back has the same tables and the same weird swirly-backed metal chairs. And Beer Bistro has the same open kitchen, flanked by a four-seat counter for those who might want to settle in for a tasting menu and watch the chefs work, which must make for a hot date.
"Hey, babe, guess what? I've got two kitchen-side stools booked tonight for Zoom -- sorry, I mean Beer Bistro. Tall food is out now, and they've gone beer-friendly. I sat there the other night and I got to see the chef make a hamburger from scratch! Tonight we could luck out and be sitting right there when he fries a sausage!"
What's new and beery are the reproductions of old beer posters hanging on the walls, along with some dubious paintings of foamy beer in different sorts of glasses. Food items are scrawled bistro-style on mirrors that hang between the handsome tall windows that grace the restaurant's western wall. And behind the bar, where liquor usually looms, one finds instead a wall of foreign beers on display. Beer bottles, actually. Because, as if at some rough roadside tavern in the Yukon where the regulars cannot be trusted not to grab the display and run, the bottles here -- like that big Duvel up top -- are mostly empty.
Last and probably least, there is all that beer-friendly food, such as the aforementioned burgers and sausage and a whole lot of less obvious stuff actually made with beer. Blanche de Chambly salmon gravlax, for example, along with cheese and lager fondue, Best Bitter bruschetta, Weissbier and salmon mussels, Belgian strong ale, coconut and curry mussels, Maudite beef stew, Oatmeal Stout lamb shank, and so on.
When I first popped in for lunch, ever hopeful, I opted to begin with a half-dozen baked oysters, some Belgian white beer mussels and an order of fries. The oysters were served in their shells with some slivered greens, a little Parmesan and way too much flaked hot pepper, but they were properly cooked, which was nice. Alas, so was all the seabed that no one had bothered to clean off the outside of the shell, and I must say the odour of lightly baked fish-outhouse can most kindly be described as appetite-suppressing.
That turned out to be a good thing because a whole 48 minutes passed before I looked over the top of my newspaper and caught a glimpse of the waitress coming my way again. But she was bearing neither food nor apology.
"Your food will be up momentarily," she said matter-of-factly, and disappeared again.
When the mussels did arrive it was evident they had been sun-tanning under a heat lamp for some time, because the shells on the top of the heap were dry and the mussels within shrivelled and tacky to the touch. The sauce was all right, though; likewise, the fries. So I figured I would return in the New Year. Foolishly I did, settling in at the bar with a date who -- after ordering a beer -- asked if she could smoke.
"No," the bartender said, "but since it's so cold outside I can let you go down to the parking garage if you want."
My date was touched, but declined, and we ordered some beer and food. The steak tartare was ground too fine and was off-puttingly wet. It was sweet with ketchup but had no bite -- from onion or mustard or gherkin or anything -- but for reasons unknown was topped off with burnt capers, which tasted foul. Belgian spiced ale braised duck gnocchi turned out to be a lump of bland braised duck surrounded by what tasted like miniature potato knishes from a bad delicatessen. Worried about the next course, we asked if we might have some more beer.
"We're trying a new draft," said one of the girls behind the bar, obviously irritated by the interruption.
Indeed, at that, rather than serve us, she served herself and her co-worker, then they turned their backs on us. In time we received a perfectly tolerable croque monsieur, full of thick-sliced ham and sticky, pungent cheese, and a fillet of salmon, which was properly grilled but doused, along with everything else on the plate, with a sauce Beer Bistro calls "Chouffe blonde horseradish butter sauce," but I would just call regrettable.
After a couple of other visits, I can say with queasy authority that the food ranges from ordinary pub class (the pizza -- I mean "flat beer bread") to downright mysterious (the lamb sausage -- the mystery being how it is possible to render the animal kingdom's fattiest meat into a sausage as dry as sawdust). Simply put, the 100-strong beer list is lovely, but you have to drink about half of it before you can face the food. And bemusedly chuckle at the prententiousness of this place instead of being just offended by it all.
jrichler@nationalpost.com;Business; Review